Electrical connectors are widely used to interconnect electronic components and subcomponents to each other and to circuits such as circuit boards to form functioning devices. Many such connectors employ multiple contact receptacles and/or posts or pins to provide the interconnection of circuits, and such contacts are arrayed in housings, mounted on circuit boards or made to interconnect wiring cables. Usually, one or the other of the contacts, plug or receptacle, is made to be resilient in order to accommodate manufacturing tolerances of the contacts, slight variations in dimensions and of the contact mountings in connectors or on circuit boards. With higher density connections where very small metal contacts are utilized and larger numbers of contacts per connector are employed, the practice of providing a limited resiliency for each contact has not proven sufficient to avoid stresses and strains to the contacts themselves, to the connector housings, and to the solder terminations to boards to preclude breakage and damage resulting in failure. Slight differences in angle of approach when mating connectors together, side loads inadvertently applied during mating or unmating, shock and vibration, and numerous other external forces can result in this condition.
Examples of connectors having a resiliency may be found in Japanese U.M. laid open Application Numbers 113981/89 and 32373/91. These connectors do provide accommodation for slight misalignments and are useful in the larger sizes, where larger center-to-center spacings are used. But, these prior art devices do not accommodate forces and displacements in more than one or two directions and are difficult to implement in very small sizes.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an electrical connector that accommodates displacement in X, Y, and Z directions while simultaneously providing a structure capable of being rendered on extremely close centers. A further object is to provide an electrical connector wherein the housing of the connector is movable to a limited extent to facilitate mechanical loads caused by misalignment, shock, or vibration, without undue stress on the connector components, contacts, terminals, or solder joints associated with an interconnection between components.